Wives help run Varanasi SMEs

The cultural city, Varanasi, is witnessing a socio-economic change involving the small and medium enterprises.

To ensure better returns from their businesses, people engaged in managing small and medium enterprises in sectors like hospitality, fitness, garment manufacturing and small hotels have involved their their wives in the business.

“Earlier the husband and wife were employed in separate companies on different positions, to support the family budget. However, when we talk of the SME sector, it is a good option to involve your family in the trade instead of looking for outside partners,” Rajat of Synergy export fashion house told Business Standard.

Rajat has been in the fabric export for 10 years. After his marriage to Madhuri, a National Institute of fashion-technology pass-out and fashion designer by profession few years back, things changed for better.

“It was after my marriage that we thought of start our own garment export house. I have expertise in the fabric section, while my wife is good at designing. Now I don’t have to engage anybody from outside to support the business,” Rajat said.

“It has resulted in increased income as well,” Madhuri said. There are several examples in Varanasi of couples, who have started their business together and are managing the show as a team.

“This is the latest development in conservative small scale business families. Both the husband and wife are participating and combine energies to promote and manage their self-started businesses . This helps them generate better results and harmony at workplace,” said Baba Madhok who owns a chain of small school in Benaras.

“It is a very important socio-economic change in a conservative city like Varanasi; where earlier women were not allowed to work outside,” he added.

He got married to Poona and then they started a journey together of building up a number of of schools. Today they have almost 6 branches, one hostel, and one gym.

Small and medium enterprises faces a dual challenge of managing funds on one hand and ensuring proper management on the other. Usually trained management graduates are not willing to join SME sector due to lower salary structure. This hits the industry further.

Hence the new trend of participation of the family members itself into the trade is a welcome move.